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I’ll bet the Win 7 Net Shares don’t work with any new pc with sign-in assistant installed!
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I’ll bet it can’t access You tube subscriptions like CBS.
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I’ll bet you can’t upgrade the drive to 2TB or 3TB.
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I’ll probably get one too.
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Don’t know.
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Don’t know.
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You’re correct, because such drives don’t exist.
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Excellent! :)
- Can’t comment; I run Vista.
- Correct; looks like the current Filter options only give access to Favorites, Playlists and My Videos. The bigger problem is CBS blocking their content from TV-enabled devices… not viewable on mobile devices like my iPad either btw. Can you name a similar device that ignores the No Syndication flags?
- Like Tony says, such drives don’t exist. When they do exist, it may be possible to upgrade. Theoretical upgrade of theoretical drive is theoretical.
- My local Best Buy has them in stock. So far, so good!
Positive observations:
- In standby it acts like a NAS, so you can dump media onto it without it being powered up. Nice!
- Dashboard feature is cool; you can favourite media folders and that creates shortcuts within the Dashboard, making it faster to get at the media you access frequently. You can also favourite Services like Netflix, YouTube and Pandora and put them in the Dashboard.
- Netflix interface is same as the Plus; so far, no Instant Queue Unavailable nonsense.
- Remote feels nice. Number buttons let you input TXT chars when searching / inputting passwords, etc. I still use my wireless Logitech Wii keyboard instead.
- Plays my MKVs and AVIs without issue. Outputs AC-3 5.1 no problem via Optical.
- Handles the high bitrate files that wouldn’t work over wireless or Powerline (main reason I wanted it).
Less positive:
- HDMI issues. AnandTech confirmed this is the same Sigma chip as the Plus, and it’s inheriting the same HDMI issues cropping up in the Beta firmwares. Mainly it’s just dropping down to 720p on startup, and the TV must be on and the right input selected otherwise HDMI handshaking fails and you get a black screen. Require a restart (just to Standby and back, which takes seconds).
- No support for HD Audio. I don’t have an AVR capable of decoding HD audio but it’s making it hard to justify buying a new AVR when I have nothing capable of outputting DTS-HD.
- No truly exciting Service additions above what the Plus offers (FaceBook app is nice but I don’t see myself using it. Same with Blockbuster and I hardly touched Mediafly on the Plus anyway). I was hoping for ShoutCast and dreaming of Hulu. Maybe further down the line but I’m assuming not.
But overall the positives outweigh the negatives for me. Everything that worked before still works. Some stuff that didn’t work now works. I now have additional backups of my media. Yet to experiment with Syncing to a network folder but that looks cool too.
After examining the GPL code that’s online now, I can tell you with certainty:
If you stay with the SHIPPED FIRMWARE, (2.01.05), Windows Live Sign-In / Essentials interference is FIXED.
The correct patches from Samba are applied.
But something broke it again in the DL’d FW (2.2.16).
Upon hearing about this, and loving the simplicity and beauty of my WDTV Live, I jumped. The draw was Gigabit, the main limitation to bluray ISO streaming experienced with my Live. I decided to pick one up to see how it works. Well - it don’t!
It refuses to see any of my network shares which is a dealbreaker! I have a MAC running OSX with several shares over NFS/CIFS/Samba and a D-Link NAS with Samba shares to which neither are found by the Live Hub!! why?
Every device in the network can see the hub & upload and download media from it, at ~10MB/s speeds. Thats another problem. The speeds do NOT qualify for gigabit by any means. 10MB/s write max in my trials IS 100Mbit, not gigabit! The chipset is identical to the Live Plus - which in a press release was claimed to NOT do gigabit, so how can this??
All the features like blockbuster, netflix, pandora are US only as well, so basically a useless selling point.
So whats wrong is brief - but enough to turn the die-hard fans stomach…
-The networking features are garbage and false advertising. With a gigabit and 5400RPM 2.5" drive you should see speeds of at least 20-30MB/s+ not 10!
-As canadians, we can’t stream ANYTHING but low quality selective youtube videos to the device, unless we pay for a proxy as well as the US service - which the player does have an option for.
-shares not seen, which is likely do to the 2.2.16 update - which is not downgradable… so hang tight? get a large USB drive and copy from comp to USB to player? waste of time!
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About Google TV (the Logitech Revue is what I guess you’re referring to), it costs $300 and it will not have an internal HD. I’d rather get the Live plus to be honest. Why do you need apps and all that? I guess I’m just simple minded, lol. I just want a media player that I can store content on (don’t want to bother with streaming since I’m not running any wires) and also do Netflix sometimes. I think the Hub would be perfect if it had built in wireless and a browser with flash support. I’d pick it over the Revue though
What you say about WD and their support is interesting and something i consider as well. Though, many people were upset with the Plus coming out instead of WD just giving the Live some Netflix support, but then it was made clear that the Live doesn’t have the necessary chip for Netflix so it couldn’t be added with a firmware update. What is a concern are the bug fixes. I don’t care about adding features, you should never expect a company to add features after the product comes out, but fixes I do agree and that’s one of the reasons I’m on the fence about buying the Hub when it comes out.
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Live does not have chip that can run Netflix and therefore there is Plus, and now Plus doesnot have a chip to run Blockbuster(?) and so we now have Hub. where is the end? how many boxes in a year.
I dont think people asked for storage on the media player as we always have the option to have it via USB. SO why this HUB now? Arent some the features now provided on hub from IDEAS of Live? So Live customers are having pieces of firmware each week and ended testing firmwares whereas WD employees are busy with HUB.
If we keep buying these boxes, I think in a year or two time we will have to buy a software or so, to maintain our inventory. I am sure WD will look at the inventory software idea and will build one box for this.
srbeen wrote:
The chipset is identical to the Live Plus - which in a press release was claimed to NOT do gigabit, so how can this??
The Sigma chip can only do 10/100 natively. But if you add a separate Ethernet controller and don’t use the on-board, then you’re not limited to the on-board chip’s capabilities, now are you?
You are both correct… The hub uses a Realtek gig interface, and the performance STINKS. 
Problem is the chips bus can’t put out gigabit speeds! Its the bottleneck!
the 1TB scorpio blue does 3Gb/s transfers - full SATAII speed. I expect 70MB/s write to that… I get 10% of that. Its not gigabit.
19 minutes for a 12GB file is what it took in my only trial, this is just under 10MB/s, and my original xbox got 11MB/s with avalaunch on a 100mbit controller. Should it do even 16MB/s I would be happy as thats SATA I speed and halfs the copy time.
Considering they made the HDD in it, and made the device - I expected at minimum 20MB/s… it falls very short. WIth the fact their update botched shares somehow - Im at a loss, and will return for a 2TB external and WD Live Plus so what I want to do can actually be done, and no noisy fan either!
The update didn’t botch shares. All of mine are still working just fine… There is likely a problem with the server acting as your master browser.
And my contrary opinion is the update DID botch shares – my NAS now doesn’t work properly if any PCs on the net are on.
So, different strokes for different folks (however, my Live units still work fine, proving the firmware update for the Hub is the problem).
